Laura Splan

Host

PROJECTS: Viral Artifacts

2014
SCULPTURES: hand-built ceramics (porcelain paper clay), laser sintered polyamide nylon stained with blood
DRAWINGS: graphite, blood on Arches archival watercolor paper

Host attempts to materialize experiences of coming to consciousness about HIV and AIDS while coming of age in the 1980’s in the suburban South. The sculptures and works on paper embody a desire to resolve fears of the emerging health pandemic with notions of “Southern hospitality” and the “gracious home”. The work draws on personal memories of AIDS arriving as an unexpected guest at our quaint home and quietly announcing itself in hollowed cheekbones, sunken eyes and Kaposi lesions.

The sculptures and works on paper interrogate notions of hospitality and domesticity as they are undermined by biological realities and a changing sociopolitical landscape. Doily forms obscure underlying renderings in the works on paper by using vintage plastic doilies as stencils. Referencing the domestic use of doilies to hide a scratch or stain on furniture, the drawings create a tableau of biomedical images that are camouflaged by the decorative doily form. The sculptures combine delicate porcelain forms with more rigid 3D printed elements stained with blood. The objects simultaneously evoke the fragility of the human body with the tenuous nature of social decorum. Biomedical forms are at odds with more decorative ones. Visceral drips disrupt lacy patterns. Discomfort disrupts comfort.

©2014 Laura Splan
Commission for Re/Presenting HIV/AIDS, Van Every/Smith Galleries, Davidson, NC / Photography by David Ramsey.